Summer is over!

                                                         WEEK 19

                                                  Summer is over!

Harman Wadhwa 

Origin : New Delhi, India

Age : 28

Watchmaking class : 8 month Service & Technician course

Current mood : It's good to be back, it took few days to settle and get in the work mode.😋 Anyhow, I am half way through my course and there is so much to do. I am covering the last section of the course on escapement. It is going well and I am looking forward to meet the new student coming in next week. (Hint: he is an Asian)
Adios, See you next week.

Pierre Aubert

Origin : Toulouse, France

Age : 23

Watchmaking class : 2Y Fullskill Program

Current mood: Great to be back at it! It took a few days for the skills to get back to normal.
 I learned how to make slot gravers (used for the making of the winding stems) on the Agathon- such a powerful and pleasing machine to use. As for the school watch, I have started to make the final version of my yoke on the Pantograph (see pictures below). More to come next week! Have a great week-end everyone!

Markus McDonald

Origin : Stockholm, Sweden

Age : 20

Current mood: This week we returned back to the course and I found that I was able to get back into the rhythm quite well. The week was primarily consistent of filing the base plates with varying degrees of speed fast at the start but much more slower as I got to the finish.

Although this can be seen as a grind it was a good way of breaking me into the rhythm of the course again whilst allowing me to prepare my tools and work on filling.

STEP 1: HARMAN 

                         We all need something to look at life, like the way I look at my watch parts. 😜😂

                                                          Adjusting of the pallet jewels

Applying the shellac on the pallet jewels

STEP 2: GRAVER MAKING (PIERRE)

STEP 3: SCHOOL WATCH (PIERRE)

                                                       Henrik’s Word

We are all back from the summer vacation, the students slowly got back to their previous work to warm up and get their hands back, Harman started to adjust pallet jewels and practicing some shellacking of pallets, Pierre got to learn how to make a new type of graver which will later help him turn the slot in the winding stems and Markus continued working on his tool bases. During my summer vacation I got to teach a restoration class here in Le Locle and directly after I went to teach another restoration class in AWCI Harrison, Ohio https://www.awci.com/ Both classes went really well and the students were really nice! AWCI now starts to feel like my second home as a teacher! As usual Tom assisted me during the class which was really nice!  As I did not have time to do the blogging during the vacation, I include some highlights from the two classes below. 

                                                              Restoration I in Le Locle:

                                    Restoration and Construction Techniques in AWCI:

This was cool to see! we are inside the new AWCI watchmaking buss that will give courses all around the US, surprisingly spacious inside and equipped with top of the line tools! Very cool indeed!